Rome, Florence, ¿Piombino?, and Pisa

On September 26^th at 3:30 AM I left for Rome. On September 26^th at 4:15 I was back at my apartment in Madrid, I had forgotten my passport. 40 euros and 20 minutes later, with my 1st ever taxi ride alone and my 1st ever taxi ride alone in Spanish behind me, I was on my way with my friends Mat and Michele to a week full of more firsts, bests, and a couple more expensive lessons.

The flight went by quickly but not as quickly as our cab driver flew down the cobblestone Italian streets from the airport. We were clutching the leather seats as vespas shot by in every direction, our driver put the pedal to the metal, swerved into the other side of the narrow walled road, and squeezing back onto the right hand lane just missing the honking truck. My first impression of Italy was: never drive there. Everyone is about to bump, scratch, or all-out crush the car next to them at all times and no one seems to notice. We were so glad to get out of that car that our 2^nd expensive lesson did not sink in until the driver was long gone. He charged us double the fixed price 30 euros from the airport. But we had survived the ride and were finally there.

We stayed with six girls from BC who are studying abroad in Rome. Our hostesses Casey and Laura were friends of Mat’s and immediately became friends of me and Michele too. They gave us VIP treatment, giving us beds, showing us the sites, guiding us to the best food, even cooking for us and being awesome company.

The first day we strolled through the famous Piazza Navona to the Pantheon. Built in honor of the gods the Pantheon is the largest unreinforced concrete dome in history and it really is enormous! There’s a “Great Eye” in the roof that both acts as a sundial and keeps tourist like us busy trying to get the right angle for a picture with it.

The second day we visited the Coliseum and the Roman Forum. It was exciting to actually be in the coliseum after seeing so many pictures of it and there was a great view from Palatine hill even though it started pouring as soon as we reached the top. However the most impressive thing might have been the number of men who magically beamed down from India to sell us umbrellas on our long cold walk home.

On our last day in Rome we woke up at 5:30 to go to the Vatican only to find that we had no hot water. Casey and Laura had to stay behind to wait for maintenance. So we set off sad and guideless. The walk there was unbelievably easy. Literally it was unbelievable. We actually pulled out our map thinking we must have been at the wrong giant basilica as we stood right in front of Saint Peter’s Square.

It was 7:20 am and no one was there so we went in Saint Peter’s Basilica first and saw the Michelangelo’s Pieta and walked around. It was amazing how big and beautiful it was on the inside.

Apparently there was no one in the Basilica because every tourist in Rome was lining up at the Sistine Chapel. For three hours we stood in line subject to sporadic rain showers, a steady stream of Indian umbrella men, and the two groups of Spaniard surrounding us. After three rainless weeks living in Madrid, getting soaked by the Italian weather felt foreign to us. After two days not understanding Italian, speaking Spanish with the Madrilenos behind us felt so familiar. We came out of the line wet, umbrella-less, and homesick for Madrid. But it was worth the wait because the Sistine Chapel is breathtaking. The paintings on the ceiling are so realistic it actually looks like the figures are popping out at you.

We completed our visit to Rome with a walk to the Trevi Fountain with Laura and Casey. The fountain is gorgeous with Ariel’s dad, King Triton, standing in his shell chariot in the center, taming his “sea-horses”. Triton must have some power over the crowd too as the peaceful beauty of the fountain seemed to calm the usually obnoxious mob of tourists.

We threw three coins into the fountain with our right hands over our left shoulders because according to a legend: the first coin means you will return to Rome, the second means that you will fall in love in Rome, and the third means you’ll marry an Italian. The legend might be true but I’m pretty sure that not all those wishes will come true for me because shortly after we threw our coins in a man came by fishing them out with a magnetic pole until the police scared him away.

At the end of the three days in Rome, I had seen a lot of famous things that were really cool to see, I only wished I had taken a guided tour so that I would’ve had a better idea of what I was looking at but they were all really expensive. That night my wish came true. As we sat at a fountain in the Piazza Santa Maria savoring our gelatos and reminiscing about the our stay in Rome with Laura and Casey, two Irish boys, Colum and Jimmy, who had heard us speaking English sat down and introduced themselves. They were art history majors who had moved to Italy a year ago to work as tour guides of the Coliseum and the Vatican. I guess that when you spend all day talking about something it’s hard to stop. Before we knew it we were getting a free tour and I couldn’t have been gladder that I hadn’t wasted my money. Colum started it off with “I suppose today you thought you were walking into the most holiest place on earth, when actually it’s the most corrupt”. I learned all kinds of facts that I never would have expected to hear on a tour of the Vatican:

-The Vatican is making a killing; it has about 13000 people visit a day and charges 13 euros each. (13000*13=140,000 euros)

-The Vatican is greedy; priest used to be able to marry until the church realized that they were leaving all their money to their families instead of the church.

-You can’t take pictures of the Sistine Chapel because a Japanese company owns the rights to it.

- Vatican is only its own country because in 1929 Hitler and Mussolini gave it independence in exchange for the Pope’s promise not intervene in politics and this is why the Pope did not speak out during World War II.

At the end of every sentence they added “mind you, we are catholic, but…” We asked them several times if the Vatican officials were aware of the tours they were giving and they assured us they were employees of the highly reputable Angel Tours. With all their talking, our wise tour guides got very thirsty and left us. We went home feeling smarter but not from all the shock-value facts that they had thrown at us, we just felt smarter than all the other tourists who had blown their money on tours like that.

From Rome, we took a train to Florence Saturday morning. We got there just in time to make the last tour up to Michelangelo’s Lantern on top of Brunelleschi’s Dome. On the 463 step climb up the winding nave you circle the interior of the dome twice and the art work inside is too much to even take in. Every square inch of the interior of the dome is covered in biblical fresco.

However, the best came last. At the end of the climb you come out onto a balcony on top of the dome that encircles Michelangelo’s Lantern. The 365 degree view of Florence below is awe-inspiring. It was perfect that we were the last group of tourists for the day because just about everyone headed back down and were left with Florence to ourselves. At 6 o’clock church bells all over the city broke the silence. This was the culmination of the entire trip because at that point we recognized what a privilege it was to be standing there 463 steps above Italy, surrounded by the most astounding art and architecture, in a city full of culture, religion and history, and knowing that we would have really great pizza for dinner!

We had time to kill before that pizza so we window shopped all along the streets lined with expensive Italian designer stores down to the Ponte Vecchio where we sat and watched the sunset.

Me and Michele got up early to go see the Ufizi and we greeted by a 3 hour long line. So we immediately gave up on that and split up. I went straight to Academia Museum to get in line while Michele walked back to get Matt. The line was a lot shorter and moved faster so I got to the front and had to let people pass me until they arrived. The big deal in this Museum was Michelangelo’s David. It was enormous. The sign in front of it quoted some guy who said something to the effect of: after seeing the David one doesn’t need to study any other statues because it’s the best. I believe that guy was right. Aside from him enormous size David is perfect. Michelangelo didn’t leave out any detail right down to the veins in his arms and the bones of his rib cage. There are a bunch of replicas of David one of which we saw a Hare Krishna group dance in front of.

Later we walked down to the Basilica di Santa Croce. The admission was five euros and we didn’t know what was inside so we left and got some café instead but the outside was pretty. Then we had some fun shopping in the open air market at San Lorenzo until me and Michele went to mass in the Basilica di Santa Maria di Fiore (the one with the Dome). Mass was in Italian but there was a pamphlet with the readings translated into many languages. With the beautiful dome over head and the gathering of worshippers from all over the world this cathedral was by far the most inspirational place I have ever attended mass.

Before I go into our last day, I have to mention the food. I could write forever about how good the food was so I’m only going to give the highlights:

First Pizza: Pizza Buffala. Thin crust, white pizza, with buffalo mozzarella, fresh basil, and little halved tomatoes. I ordered this on the recommendation of an Italian exchange student at BC last year and although it was good it was not the best.

Best Pizza: Pizza Quatro Formaggi from Il Portale in Florence with pomodoro sauce, and grana, gorgonzola, mozzarella and pecorino cheeses. I chose this because I had read in my travel book Florence is known for its pecorino cheese. Normally I stick my nose up at such a simple sounding pizza. I was a strong believer that the more toppings the better. My new philosophy is the better the cheese the better. I’m not sure if it was the
pecorino but one of the cheeses on that pizza was so creamy and sweet that it tasted like ice cream. It was without a doubt the best pizza I’ve ever had. And as sad as it is to say at age 20, I’m positive that I will never again in my whole life have another pizza as good as that. It was like a pool of cheese hiding the ideal amount of sauce all enclosed by the perfect crust. I would go all the way back to Florence just for one more slice.

Best Gelato: So good that it’s impossible to choose a best. I tried to be adventurous and ended up ordering a lot of flavors with out knowing what they were. But I was never disappointed. I tried: chocolate, chocolate fondante di 70% cacoa, nocciola (hazelnut), mirtillo (blueberry, or black rasberry), lampone (raspberry), Cocomero (watermelon), mint, and last but not least, banana. The only one I didn’t like was watermelon. (and I saw a lot of ISA cabinets)

Best Espresso: I had my first espresso ever at the Tasso d’Oro across from the Pantheon which is the best café in Rome. Laura warned that to a non-coffee drinker it would be too strong but I didn’t want to whimp out and order a “café Americana” and I’m glad that I didn’t!

Best Pasta in Rome: My travel book said that Pasta Carbonara is a traditional roman dish. It was traditionally delicious! pasta with egg, cream sauce and bacon.

Best Meal: Although the above mentioned pizza was the best food I had my best overall meal was our last meal in Florence. Normally I hate the idea of eating at the same restaurant twice, especially when traveling, especially two days in a row, but the pizza I got there was so good that I was actually hoping my friends would want to go back. It was all around a wonderful meal. The waiter recognized us from the day before and spoke to us in Italian. We shared a carafe of Chianti, the fancy type of wine from that region. Matt and Michele shared some of their pesto pasta, asparagus and tomatoes with me and theirs was the best pasta I tasted in Italy. This time I got the Bistecca alla Fiorentina, a huge, thick t-bone steak, per the advice of my travel book. It was possibly the best steak I’ve ever had. It was rare and juicy and flavorful and enormous. We finished our experience with desert. I got a chocolate tarte, Michele got some fruity triffle, and Matt got a lemony cheesecake. We could not stop talking about our meal the whole walk home. In fact, when we got back to the hostel, Mat went straight to the computer to email himself a reminder to learn how to cook.

Side Trip:
Monday morning we woke up at 4:30 excited to see the Leaning Tower of Pisa. We got a bit delayed checking out and had to run halfway to the train station. We just barely made it onto our 5:30 train. The ticket machine had told us it would be about a 2 hour trip so we went to sleep. We would wake up periodically to see what station we were stopping at but none of them were labeled very clearly and none of them seemed to be big enough to be Pisa so we kept sleeping.

At 7:50 we all woke up simultaneously, looked at the time, and jumped off the train. We had overslept the 2 hour ride by 20 minutes. We got off the train in the middle of nowhere. We went into the station checked the train schedule and saw that our train was supposed to have arrived in Pisa at about 6:20. It wasn’t a 2 hour ride after all. It was a 45 minute trip from Florence. So we hadn’t overslept out stop by 20 minutes. Rather, we were at a least an hour and a half away from Pisa, from where our 11:25 flight was leaving. At the time we had no idea where we were but, I checked a map when we got back. The red arrows point to Florence, where we left from; the yellow arrows indicate Pisa, our destination; the green show Piombino, where we were.

We could not figure out when the next train was. To make matters worse for the first time in 5 days no one around spoke English which just goes to show we really were in the middle of nowhere. We paced back and forth from train schedule to bus schedule totally panicking. Finally, Matt went in to the little café and asked the ladies at the counter how we could get back to Pisa.

The next train was at 9:30 and would get us to Pisa by 11:30, five minutes after our flight was taking off. There were no buses. When we asked about a taxi they said no way because it would cost between 200 and 400 euros.

For about 5 minutes we just stood there while the idea of being stranded in Italy sunk in. Trying to save money we hadn’t bought flight insurance and our classes were starting the next morning. This was the type of disaster that only happens on TV and you laugh and thank God that you’re not that dumb. But we really were that dumb and it had really happened to us.

In the end we asked a taxi driver how much it would be. 180 euros to get us there by 9:30. We threw our stuff in the trunk, made a pit stop at the bank and were off to Pisa. So we didn’t get to see the Leaning Tower of Pisa, but we did see more farm land than we’d ever dreamed we would on our 122 km taxi ride through Tuscany from Piombino to Pisa.

Truthfully, it was the best possible ending to our trip because it really brought things full circle. We began with a couple mistakes that cost us, and we ended with an expensive mistake. The trip started with some pricey taxi rides. The trip ended with a pricey taxi ride. And we learned a lesson from it. I might have taken away: bring your passport when traveling, check the price charts when taking a taxi from an airport, or make sure one person is awake to look out for your train stop. But instead what we really learned we are college students and should never do things in the morning.